


The Other Time Lord

by Holdt



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Animated Universe, DC Cinematic Universe, DCU (Comics), Man of Steel (2013), Superman (Christopher Reeve Movies), Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Bisexual Clark Kent, Death, Denial, Depression, Doomed Timelines, Freeform, Heavy Angst, Hope, M/M, Mass Death, Multiple Crossovers, Sacrifice, Self-Sacrifice, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 20:02:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12327882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Holdt/pseuds/Holdt
Summary: Round and round he goes.





	The Other Time Lord

**Author's Note:**

> So today hasn't been the best of days, but as you can see I'm working that out in very healthy ways. *sigh*
> 
> This is a love story about people, not individuals.

The year is 1994 and Clark is 13. When the bus goes over the edge of the ravine, he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, and then he holds it. Through the muffled thumping, the shrill cries and the violent disturbance in the water around him, he holds it.

And holds it.

When he swims his way out of the muck, and claws his way up the damp embankment, he doesn’t look back. When he slogs his way into the kitchen door, dull-eyed and dripping mud, the knife his mother is using to cut biscuit dough clatters to the linoleum.

His father sits with him in the sun, and tells him that he did the best he could, that Clark did good, that he has nothing to be ashamed of. Neither of them pretend to believe the lie.

Rewind.

 

The year is 1989 and Clark is 8. It’s Brian Matthews and the Chambers boy, along with some friends. The boys pushing him and threatening him don’t know that Clark could kill them with one careless blow. Clark remembers the impact of flesh and the crunch of bone; he hears the scream of shock and feels the spatter of hot blood on his face. He can taste Brian’s pain and hear him begging for his mom. He remembers laughing as he rips these kids apart.

Clark digs his hands into the fence behind him and closes his eyes. Eventually, the boys go.

Rewind.

 

The year is 1998 and Clark is 17. He saves his father. The resulting press of national attention is so severe that the Kent’s have to install multiple security systems. People leave threatening notes and bloody souvenirs on Kent land and strangers make threats across phone lines in the middle of the night. The government brings people to test Clark, to question his family. His parents are detained; the career servicemen who guard Clark night and day say that it won’t be long now, but they say it for years. They threaten his mother, and Clark isn’t strong enough to fight them all. When the doctors come with their sub-dermal chips, sedatives and bits of nausea-inducing oily green rock, Clark bolts. He can’t take anymore.

The journey around the planet is exhausting.  Clark watches a hungry tornado take Jonathan Kent again and again.

Rewind.

 

The year is…

It’s 2019.

The year isn’t important. What’s important is the sound of two heartbeats stopping, the sound of cartilage ripping and the sound of a world up in arms.

Lois. Their child.

 _No_.

Rewind.

 

It’s 1981; technically, Clark shouldn’t be here.  Technically, Clark is negative one year old.

Technicalities don’t much matter when twisting time-streams, Clark finds. He watches, hovering above, as a happy trio spill out of a cinema in the faded glory of one of Gotham’s oldest neighborhoods.  He can’t see anything of the man to come in the slender, bright-eyed child below.  A shadow steps out into the dim circle of lamplight, a glint of dull metal and the barrel rises. The man steps, puts himself between the barrel and the woman and child. The woman presses the boy back into the shelter of her own body.  They’re good parents, good people, and Clark has the power.  He moves faster than their eyes can track, lifts the crook up and throws him onto a nearby rooftop, crushes the pistol to slag. He hovers there for a moment, and the Waynes are in motion, rushing to the head of the narrow street and the safety of the wider thoroughfare beyond. Wide brown eyes stare back at Clark as Bruce is pulled behind his mother.

The Bat is unborn. So is the Brat of Gotham.

When Bruce runs for Mayor at the age of 32, Clark has made a lifetime of being experienced enough to rise up the ranks and quickly become his P.A. it doesn’t take long  for the rest; Bruce Wayne isn’t the same man—he doesn’t have the same physical responses, but what  he lacks in fighting acumen he more than makes up for intellectually.

It isn’t until Bruce makes a deal with the other four Families to solidify his grip on Gotham’s criminal element during his run for presidency that Clark Kent-Wayne realizes what a terrible mistake he’s made. He undoes it—all of it, and watches as his world is ripped into ruin. In the end, he can’t bear the betrayed expression on his husband’s face, and so Clark flies, far and fast.

_Faster._

Rewind.

 

The year is 2013; Clark is 32 and the best he can manage is a lowball estimate of around 129,000 confirmed voices silenced. There are probably over a million others injured as he battles with Zod through downtown Metropolis. No matter how he tries to swing the fight, it always ends this way. Zod is too good a strategist—even when Clark doesn’t punch him into the city, he aims for it like a homing beacon. He knows the figures by heart: 4,000 dead in the initial blast of the World Engine, 129,000 dead worldwide from the resultant environmental shifts, millions injured and maimed,  over 250,000 people missing, many of whom would quickly join the thousands currently dying. $750 billion worth in damages in Metropolis alone;  a worldwide economic effect of about 2 trillion dollars. The damage zone is never smaller than a mile in diameter; he saves more lives in less time by just focusing on General Zod—every attempt Clark makes to mitigate the damage by rescuing bystanders results in more lives lost overall.

No matter how quickly he manages to murder the last of his own kind, some of humanity always hates him for it. They build him a statue. They worship him. They kill in and against his name.

He tries again anyway. (He has to hope for better.)

Rewind.

 

The year is 2006 and Clark is 25. He fails to stop a helicopter from crashing into a busy metropolitan road. No, that’s too kind; Clark looks up at the helo twirling madly above the bustling avenue and then _continues on his way._ A Pulitzer Prize winning journalist is killed in the aborted kidnapping scheme. Superman is never introduced to the world. Clark writes a short letter on the ethics of putting oneself in unnecessary danger for a scoop and mails it to the Daily Planet.  His modest article is immediately picked up and used as an intro to the Op-Ed of the season.

 Clark joins the Daily Planet with a generous retainer and quietly rises to be known as a competent, incisive writer.  He’s supposed to follow a lead on a story in Niagara Falls; when the small boy tumbles from the rail, Clark takes a step back and lets the crowd rush in. He returns to his hotel room and writes a scathing expose about parental responsibility, American privilege and child-rearing in the 20th century.  His bare-bones delivery and country common-sense are a national hit.

He’s never been more successful. With the money from additional book deals and radio sit-ins, Clark is able to refinance the old Kent house and give his mother the sort of life she’d left far behind when she decided to defy her own parents and marry a farmer’s son. He measures his effect on the world by the lens of attention he can bring to problems both regional and world-wide.

He deflects the Kryptonian vessel before it ever reaches Earth’s orbit; it explodes harmlessly in the shadow of one of Neptune’s moons. By the time someone on Earth notices, it won’t matter.

He takes a much-needed holiday back in Kansas just in time to watch the worst earthquake in local history unfold.  115 people die from the flooding that results when the Hoover Dam is breached; 210 die and hundreds more are injured in the tectonic shifts that rock the area. Clark is distantly glad that he doesn’t have to dig Lo up again; his heart can only take so much.

His heart can only take so much.

His mother kisses him and tells him that she’s never been prouder to see her son again, when he begs for forgiveness. She knows he won’t be coming back.

His flight is blurred by the tears he can’t quench and the screams he can’t drown out.

Rewind.

 

The year is 1999 and Clark is fed up.

He’s spent an eternity, twisting the clock. He’s seen so many probabilities that his mind can’t bear to contain them all. He wraps the globe in fire and fear, runs them all down laughing, brings the fear of god back to earth. If he has to live in hell, then so do the rest of them. By the time he comes back to his senses, it’s 2013. Lex Luthor has never been born. He’s killed  Bruce long ago and Lois died in a freak train wreck as a child. Everyone he’s ever known or loved is unmade, and Clark still isn’t free.

He’ll never be free.

Rewind.

 

It’s 2011 and Clark is 30. He’s just learned his name. He’s just learned his purpose.

"You can save them," Jor-El  assures Kal-El. "You can save them all."

Jor-El has all the confidence of thousands of years of advanced science to back him up; he must be right. Clark just has to figure out _how._

Rewind. Rewind. Rewind.


End file.
